


Already Broken

by paytontanner



Category: One Direction (Band), Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: 1920s, AU, filling the void until season five, harry styles in peaky blinders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 15:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19890043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paytontanner/pseuds/paytontanner
Summary: - - Birmingham, 1919 - -The woven basket digs into your hip as you knock on the large wooden door.“Excuse me! I have your laundry here.”It’s your last delivery of the day. Your boots are caked in mud and the bottom of your skirt is dirty with it too. It’s been as grey a day as any other. The Birmingham sky melting into the grey brick of the townhouses lining the streets of Small Heath. You run back and forth between your mum’s laundry shop to deliver and pick up dirty linens while dodging the horses running errands with their handlers and the occasional motor cars. Every once in a while a lad will stumble out of a pub and holler at you about his britches needing a stitching or a bloody stain on his cap.“Oi! Mam! I’ve got things to do, ya know. I won’t be bringing it back till’ tomorrow if ye can’t bother to answer-”The door swings open suddenly, leaving you a bit unsteady as your beating fist falls freely through the air.Behind a cloud of cigarette smoke stands a tall, dark-haired man with piercing green eyes. His grey three-piece suit wrinkles as he leans against the door frame and pinches the fat of his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger.





	Already Broken

\- - Birmingham, 1919 - -

The woven basket digs into your hip as you knock on the large wooden door. 

“Excuse me! I have your laundry here.” 

It’s your last delivery of the day. Your boots are caked in mud and the bottom of your skirt is dirty with it too. It’s been as grey a day as any other. The Birmingham sky melting into the grey brick of the townhouses lining the streets of Small Heath. You run back and forth between your mum’s laundry shop to deliver and pick up dirty linens while dodging the horses running errands with their handlers and the occasional motor cars. Every once in a while a lad will stumble out of a pub and holler at you about his britches needing a stitching or a bloody stain on his cap. 

“Oi! Mam! I’ve got things to do, ya know. I won’t be bringing it back till’ tomorrow if ye can’t bother to answer-” 

The door swings open suddenly, leaving you a bit unsteady as your beating fist falls freely through the air. 

Behind a cloud of cigarette smoke stands a tall, dark-haired man with piercing green eyes. His grey three-piece suit wrinkles as he leans against the door frame and pinches the fat of his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. 

He looks beyond you, examining the busy street before settling his eyes on you. “What’s it, then?” 

“Delivery, sir. Your laundry.” You twist to thrust your hip towards him, displaying a pile of neatly folded and pressed linens. “It’s a shilling, sir. My mum wanted you to know she appreciated your new business. It’s not often we-” 

“You’re the laundrymaid?” 

You use your free hand to brush your hair from your brow and lift your chin up defiantly. 

“Yes, sir. I’ve been helping me mother since my pa-” 

The man clears his throat, inhaling his cigarette, and stepping back to let you in. “Put it on the table,” he orders, watching you intently as you step inside. He reaches into his pocket to dig out some coins to slap down on the table. “Sixpence to put it away. Wardrobe’s over there,” he nods to a spot behind you and scratches a heavy chair against the floor as he drags it out to sit.

This isn’t a usual part of the job. You pick up laundry, help wash, or dry, or fold, and then you return it with a bill. Sometimes you haggle with an honry housewife about a stain, or an extra pence, or a late delivery. Rarely do you leave laundry in the hands of a man. Last year all the men were off at war. Now, they are back, some of them, anyway. A lot never came home, in more ways than one way. They are mostly off in the factories, or working the docks, or drunk in the pubs. 

You hesitate. You know how men have their ideas about a lady working outside the home. Just so happens that most of that work tends to be horizontal. A handful of neighborhood names get shouted out of pubs as the rowdy men account their real, but often sensationalized, excursions with them. That type of work they don’t seem to mind. 

“Look, sir, I don’t know what kinda mind you have about me, but” 

“Just nice to have a woman put away y’laundry,” he assures with a nod and a deep exhale of smoke. “Nothin’ more than that.” 

There’s nothing in his face that makes you want to trust him. His lips are pressed firmly, his eyebrows are furrowed tightly together, and there’s a dangerous glint in his eyes. The olive green around his pupils fades into a near black in the dimly lit room. You turn away as he leans back in his chair, turning the knob on the gramophone in front of him to turn up the parlour music. 

“Knickers, shirts, and trousers,” he directs gruffly whilst motioning to the drawers. 

You prop the basket back onto your hip and turn away from the man tepidly. The extra money will be yours to keep, and there was that new picture that you wanted to see at the cinema. You huff and swallow any doubt you had. The man’s home is lightly furnished. There’s a large fireplace; otherwise, the room is just a wire bed frame, side table, and wardrobe. Clearly the residence of an unwed lad and not a well-off one at that. . 

With a bit of effort, you pull open the top drawer finding it to be full of socks and knickers like he said. Glad that you’re turned away so he can’t see your blush, you carefully begin putting away the freshly laundered items. 

“You’re new round here?” you ask over your shoulder, turning enough to notice that his eyes are still on you. “You move here after the war?” 

You’re tired of talking about the war, but its permeated every part of life for the last five years so you don’t know how to separate from it. There was the time before the war when everyone talked about what life would be like during the war, then there was the war, and there was now - post war. Everyone was coming back, or rebuilding, or starting new. No matter what, everyone pretended they had moved on it from it but no one had. 

You turn around when the man doesn’t answer; he’s fixated on you. His eyes flash with secrets, but his lips, pressed tightly together assure that you will never hear them. Instead, he raises a glass of dark whiskey to his lips, sipping it slowly.

“After the war, then.” You decide, turning back to fold away the rest of his laundry. His clothes are all well-kept. No holes, or tears, or stains that reveal him to be a laborer or a docker. Nothing like your blouses with unmatched buttons or skirts slightly tattered from wear. “And not a factory man. Clothes are much too expensive,” you assume further without any sound of protest. You close the middle drawer with a shove of your hip and peer over your shoulder to see just the smallest hint of a smirk turning his lip. 

“So, back from the war and decided to move to Small Heath? Most of us are trying to get away from here. No jobs, no countryside, no blue sky. Just mud, and smoke, and coppers and criminals running everyone round in circles. ” You kneel to the floor, plopping the basket beside you, and wiggling open the bottom drawer. “Can’t imagine what might bring ye to settle here -”

You stop short, staring at the open bottom drawer of the man’s dresser. Flat wool caps in haphazard rows line the bottom. To most they are indiscriminate. Not the most popular fashion, but certainly not something to draw anyone’s eye on the streets of London, or Derby, or Bristol. However, here, in Birmingham, in Small Heath, they immediately set any man wearing them apart from the crowd. The small, silver razor blade poking out threateningly from the brim of the cap easily arrests attention of any passerby and assures them of what any disagreement will guarantee. 

The creek of the floor boards is what breaks your focus; the man’s slow footsteps falling heavily until he stops beside your kneeled form. 

You can feel your heart beating thickly in your throat. You don’t turn towards him. The sound of the music and the streets outside disappear into a thick static that fills your ears and quiets your thoughts. You’re alone with a gangster in his empty house. You force yourself to tuck away the trousers still folded in your basket, being careful to avoid brushing the sharp shreds of steel against your knuckles. 

When you’re done, a single leather brogue kicks out in front of you, pushing close the drawer, and shutting away his trousers, and the razor-blade rimmed caps but not the threat. 

You ease slowly from your bum, carefully eyeing a rot in the floorboard at your feet. 

“I’ll just be going then-” you mumble, snatching up the basket and popping it onto your hip. You can’t bring your self to step past the dangerous man. 

“The bill?”

His hand brushes past you, making you flinch, but he only stubs out the last of his dying cigarette in a glass plate that rattles behind you. 

“It’s no charge, sir. It’s on the house for any of yours.” 

You step away, trying to brush by him, but he grabs you by the forearm and stops you dead. 

He leans down, tilting his head until you gather the nerve to draw your eyes to his. “Yours?” 

You swallow the lump in your throat. 

“One of the Shelby kin. You’re a blinder.” His eyes are trained on you, unblinking. “You’re a gangster.” 

He smiles then, humourlessly and barely perceptible. 

“A cousin,” he grumbles, plucking a cap from his back pocket and fixing it on his head as if to confirm the point. You can’t help but stare at the sharp, metal blade. Now, you realise the danger you sensed in him before. His hair, shaved on the side and long on top, the scar under his chin, the round collar pinned securely at his throat. “I need someone to do my laundry, miss,” he says cooly, still gripping you around the arm. “Someone I can trust. Someone who’s going to keep quiet about what they see.” 

Laundrymaids keep a lot of secrets: a forgotten note tucked away in an errand-boy’s trousers, the lipstick-stained collar dropped off by a red-faced husband in the cover of dusk, or the young virgin daughter who shamefully needs her bodice let out. Occasionally, you will watch your mum scrub away these secrets with tightly sealed lips but knowing eyes. This is different, though. You’re not sure how much you will be willing to unsee. 

The blinders are dangerous. They control the pubs, and the betting tracks, and the cops. The Garrison, the neighborhood pub, had been owned by one of your father’s mates, before the war, but then one day it wasn’t his anymore. He had a wad of cash for the exchange, but just because he was tight-lipped about the thing didn’t mean anyone couldn’t see the bitterness behind his eyes. That’s how it happened. You could take the money or not, but either way, the Peaky Blinders would take what they wanted with your consent or not. 

“My mum won’t allow it, sir. I’m sorry. She won’t want your business-” 

“Not her,” he interrupts, reaching to take the coins from the table and push them into your captured hand. “You. Next Sunday I have an errand to run. Meet me here at half six. I will have some washing up for ya.”

There’s no room for argument. Everything is bought in Small Heath with money or force: liquor, power, secrecy. 

You search his face desperately. You know you don’t have a choice. At least your mum will not have to be involved; you can still protect her. 

“Okay,” you agree, reaching down for your basket as he lets go of your arm. “Here. Next Sunday.” 

He nods, eyeing you thoughtfully. If he is surprised, or happy, or disappointed, then he doesn’t show it. Rather he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out another cigarette with a mindless, routine movement. 

He opens the door for you, letting in the noise of the busy Birmingham street. 

As you step out the door, anxiety spikes in your heart and you abruptly turn on the man. “This will just stay between you and I?” you ask nervously. “You won’t let anyone be any wiser?” 

He inhales deeply, taking time to exhale a deep puff of smoke and watch it disappear into the grey Birmingham sky before answering. His green eyes flick down to your carefully. 

“Do I look like a man who shares his secrets?”


End file.
